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Abstract

In this article we present a downscaled laboratory setup emulating five natural guide stars, a layered static atmosphere and a 7.5-m aperture telescope equipped with dual-conjugate adaptive optics at a wavelength of 2.2 µm. Three reconstruction alternatives were evaluated; conventional adaptive optics, field-averaged conventional adaptive optics and dual-conjugate adaptive optics. The results were compared with Zemax-simulations of the setup. The expected increase of the size of the isoplanatic patch, using dual-conjugate adaptive optics, was confirmed.

Average PSFs from the experiment. Case a) is uncorrected, b) is corrected with conventional AO, c) is field averaged conventional AO and d) is dual-conjugate AO. The intensity IN is normalised with the central intensity of the diffraction-limited PSF. The axes of the PSFs are the relative coordinates in arc seconds, scaled to the parent version.

Comparison of the experimental results with a Zemax model of the experiment. The black curves depict the Strehl ratio as function of angle, α, from the central guide star in the parent experiment with error intervals marked in green or blue. The red dots are the experimental values including error bars. Case a) is uncorrected, b) is corrected with conventional AO, c) is field averaged conventional AO and d) is dual-conjugate AO. The green families resulted from running the optimization routine a single time, and the blue family resulted from running it 10 times. See text for more explanation.